


Standing in the Ashes at the End of the World

by Clarice Chiara Sorcha (claricechiarasorcha)



Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Reunion, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:02:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claricechiarasorcha/pseuds/Clarice%20Chiara%20Sorcha
Summary: After the war Thor works the Wakandan fields, and waits.





	Standing in the Ashes at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

> OF COURSE I HAD TO DO THIS, I CAN'T LET IT END LIKE THAT.
> 
> Also, I adore Shuri. Just putting that out there.

He’s been alone most of this particular day, but he had not precisely expected it to remain that way. So he cannot be not surprised when he hears the gentle pad of feet at his back, her presence bright and burning even from a distance. Thor doesn’t look to her, instead keeps his one good eye upon the western horizon. Raising his glass again, he revels a moment in the slide of cool beer down the length of his tilted throat.

She doesn’t ask his permission to approach, though he does not need give it. This is her land. He can hear its song resonating with her every step. Perhaps she is not the one they had intended for this place, but she had been born to it all the same. This is the land of her people, and she belongs to them both now – as she always has.

And Thor, now without people nor land, takes a drink again. It is nothing of an Asgardian brew, far weaker and less full in its flavours. But he is a guest here, and he gratefully takes what is offered. Even though “guest” is a word that implies the inherent ability to return home, which is something Thor no longer has.

She’s slight, this young mortal, but her power is great. And it has but multiplied in the hours since he had last seen her, the sacred ceremony now complete. Taking a place as his side, she stretches out her feet to the earth, revealing them as bare beneath the sweep of her simple dress. The braids braids are long down the curve of her spine, as unbound as the grief in her eyes. Looking to her at last, Thor sees their dark colour turned to burnished gold by the sunset, her skin as dark and rich as the soil he has been tilling all the day.

“You remind me of a friend,” Thor says, very quiet. “A wise and great man, given custody over great power.”

Her head tilts, curious and weary both. “Did he deserve this power?” she asks, simple and direct. “Did he wield it well?”

Thor can think only of the way he fell: in regret, that he could not do more. In gladness, in that he had achieved all that he had. “He was the greatest friend and counsel I could hope for.” And he swallows, hard. “Outside of my own family, of course.”

Shuri looks again to the horizon, where the sun’s setting hastens still. Great branching trees have turned to black silhouette against the rich canvas of a red-hue spectrum; in the distance, the low shift of a herd of grazing rhinoceroses reminds them both that life finds a way. The sun will rise again, tomorrow.

As he watches her, he thinks again of the old queen: a graceful woman of courage and spirit, standing tall at her daughter’s side as they had been properly introduced in the hours after the battle. Even then he’d known Frigga would have enjoyed her company. They would have talked long through the days, of matters only they might know.

“It wasn’t supposed to be my power,” Shuri says, very quiet. In truth she might have been speaking to the earth itself, and not just him. Still Thor bows his head, says what she already knows.

“But now it is.”

In the quiet Shuri looks down to her hands; Thor cannot help but follow her gaze. They are bare now, save for the pale carven lines of heart and love and life. Frigga had always enjoyed using them to concoct tales of their futures, when they’d been but boys. In the end only Loki had ever been able to eclipse her in ability.

“I don’t want to sound ungrateful.” Here she meets his eye, her strength undeniable in the way she moves, the clearness of each word. “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your assistance with the heart-shaped herb. We could never have performed the ceremony without it.”

She speaks so formally, and it is not necessary. But Thor does not say so; he suspects she knows it already. And they all have their masks, inadequate as they might be.

He also cannot take much of the credit for something that would never have come to be without their own initiative. The story as he knows it says that the grove of their precious herb had been recently razed, leaving but one surviving bloom; while the majority of it had gone to reviving their king, they had kept enough for Shuri to work her own particular magic over.

It had been a week after he’d begun working in the fields that she had come to him, and asked for his aid. She’d looked out over the rows of crops, coaxed back to gentle life beneath the knowing hand of a fertile nature-god, and had guessed at what more he might do for them.

“I am happy to have helped,” he says, honest. “But it would have grown under your own hand and will, too.”

“Slower, though.” Shuri seems quicker to acknowledge her limits; in that, Thor knows she will always go beyond them. “And we don’t have a lot of time.”

He cannot argue that with her. Looking to the fields, again, he feels his hands ache again to be at the helm of some tool, for all the sun still goes down. At first they’d had him working with other Wakandans, doing what they could to return the damaged land to arable state. But when they had realised Thor’s powers were not only of thunder and lightning, but born of the wild natural world itself…

“We may need rain, again.”

Thor casts a glance to Stormbreaker, propped neatly against the lintel of his doorway. “It’s a little early yet. Perhaps late tomorrow would be best.”

Pushing to her feet, Shuri nods to him where he looks up to her. “I’ll leave that to you.” Pausing a moment, he sees the tremble in her lips. And yet all she says is, “Thank you, Thor.”

He cannot help but ask. “Did you see him?”

Too quickly she turns her face away, and dread fills him at the thought he has gone too far. But then she glances back, swifter still. Her eyes shine even in this twilight, her smile tremulous and so very tender.

“Yes,” she whispers, and the joy is a spark that could both warm, and destroy. “And you know…he didn’t say a word. He just…” Though Shuri’s eyes fall closed, no tears escape. Her mouth has turned tight, hands crossing over her chest. And then she lets them fall, opens her eyes slowly. Everything in her is both majestic, and so very perfect.

“I will not fail my people.”

In turn, Thor cannot help think of his own. In the end it’s easier to think instead of these grand fierce people, and their queen who is as much wizard as she will be warrior.

“No,” he says, and it hurts. “You won’t.”

After she is gone, he remains seated alone on the low wooden porch. The others are both not far, and far enough. They’d purposefully given him this space to himself, which he could not be but grateful for. Working the earth had been a skill learned from Frigga. And yet it had come so naturally to him that occasionally she’d occasionally jest that he might have somehow cheated, had his honour never permitted anything of the sort.

It has turned almost to complete darkness before he notices the shift in air pressure. With the taste of ozone upon his lips, Thor glances up. There, he stops dead. A dark figure approaches across this fertile earth, hair long about thin shoulders. And Thor climbs to his feet. Stormbringer lays quiescent where he has left her, but his fingers prickle with light plasma, his heart skipping what feels every second beat.

At last he stands before him – and there, he stops. There is little light left but it’s enough for Thor to see: he’s a little thinner, a little older, his exhaustion apparent in both movement and mood. And there is so much to say, _so_ much. For once, Loki says nothing, and only waits. There is only one thing Thor can do.

He embraces him, drawing Loki into his arms so tight that for a moment neither of them can breathe. But that’s not why he’s light-headed, eyes burning, heart stuttering in his chest. He tries to speak, fails, can only press his nose against Loki’s skin and breathe deeper still.

“I can explain.”

The words are felt more than heard, a vibration from lips to skin. And Thor sighs, whispers an answer into his hair. “You don’t have to.”

But he does. When at last they are untangled again, Loki will not let go. But he speaks again only when they are in the small cabin, a fire burning low in the cool night air. The open window frames the sky where stars begin to gather, linked by wisps of the galaxy stretched like translucent lace between them.

And in turn, Thor does not let him go either. They sit so close as to be twins in the womb, propping up one another as much as themselves. When he speaks, Loki does so in a halting voice as he gazes into the heart of the fire; it’s utterly unlike the silvered tongue that had been so lauded in the halls of the Nine Realms and beyond.

It’s not a long tale; as Loki so wryly notes, none of the tricks he had used had been particularly novel. With the tesseract in hand, he’d been able to duplicate himself while sending his actual corporeal form elsewhere – specifically, to one of the escape pods of the _Statesman_. But given Thanos’s perception for what Loki wryly called “my bullshit,” he’d had to stay close to prevent him from realising the truth.

“And I almost did die.” His shiver moves through Thor, turns him just as cold even with golden heat upon them both. “It was too much. His power, I mean. It threw me back into my own body, and…I blacked out. And then when I woke, started looking for you…you were gone.” Here he closes his eyes, and Thor does not need to ask to know the horror of what he’d done: searching through the bodies of their people, floating abandoned in deep space.

But as Thor’s grip tightens, Loki turns his head; they are so close, now, and Thor can feel his breath, take it as his own. “But I knew you would go to Midgard,” Loki whispers; his eyes are deep and dark, haunted and haunting both. “I knew that nothing would stop you, after that.”

In the silence that follows, Thor raises one hand, rests it gently upon one cheek. Loki already turns into it even as shame chokes him.

“I was so afraid.” Here his voice breaks, and he struggles only more as Thor begins a gentle stroke of thumb over the corner of his jaw. “When it began. When Thanos took his true power.” Lowering his gaze hides little; first one, then two tears drop unheeded to his lap. “That I would get here too late. That you would be one of those he took.”

Thor only chuckles, low and humourless. “He can hardly halve the Asgardian population,” he says, each syllable a dagger pushed through his heart. “We’re all that’s left of it.”

Such words turn Loki stiff and cold in his grasp. “I’m not even truly Asgardian.” Bitterness radiates from him, attempting to freeze all in his immediate proximity. “Everything was a lie.”

But Thor will not fall prey to such again. “Not _everything_.” And he gives Loki a small shake, fingers digging deep into his leathers as he keeps his face turned away. “I’ve never lied to you about my love.”

“Because you’re a fool,” he snorts, and Thor cannot help another humourless chuckle.

“That I am.”

Loki turns to glare, and they are too close. And yet neither one of them draws back. They’ve been at odds since childhood, fighting one another even as they love one another more than anything else in their worlds. And then Thor is pressing forward, all borders broken, their lips meeting. The kiss is sudden and swift, sharp in its desire; it’s Loki who draws back first, though it’s already too late.

“What are you doing?” he hisses, but he doesn’t even try to break free of Thor’s grasp. And he has never felt so strongly that they are one – that is no Thor without Loki, and no Loki without Thor.

“What I want.” It’s so simple. “And you want it too.” But here desperation enters his words, sudden and harsh. “Don’t lie to me, Loki. Not now.” Even as he wavers, he says it plain. “ _Please_.”

Loki says nothing in return. But the fact that his brother then draws him closer instead says everything that matters. The taste of him is both strange and familiar upon his lips, his tongue; it seems like they have been doing this forever, for all this is their very first time.

When Thor pauses long enough to catch breath, he finds Loki staring. For all he tries to manufacture calm, his usual spiteful aplomb when a situation is not as he has engineered it, he cannot hide the high flush in his cheeks, the sharp desire in his eyes.

“Why are we doing this?”

“This is all we have.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Already Loki’s openness folds away, his exposed emotions shuttering away again behind a careless sneer. “Oh, and so that’s the only reason you want me?”

“I’ve always wanted you.” And Loki goes so still before such frank words – and they are so simple, for all it is so complicated. “This is no trick, Loki.”

“No,” he echoes, and closes his eyes. “No, that’s my thing.” He’s so lovely, and so precious, tangled up in Thor here before the fire. And in truth, though Thor cannot look away, he wouldn’t want to anyway. He could stare for the rest of his natural life at Loki as he is now: limned in the low golden light of the fire, silent and thoughtful, lips reddened by Thor’s own handiwork. Sudden lightning strike bathes him in silver; beyond the open window, the low rumble of brontide comes closer over the dark horizon.

Loki opens his eyes, at that. “You know that if you do this,” he says, searching and low, “then there’s no going back. That you’ll be mine.” He’s so close, again, the next single word pure oath. “Forever.”

“Fool,” Thor says, and he’s laughing; he’d pledged himself to this ending so very long ago. “I always was anyway.”

Their lips move together, again. It’s so natural a movement, though he’s never contemplated this before. And yet he cannot get enough of his brother’s clever mouth, and his too clever tongue; it doesn’t matter that with it he can taste ash, can taste memory. With one bite, there is blood, too; even as Loki draws back Thor opens his eyes, takes in his startled suspicious gaze.

“What was that for?”

Thor only stares. The blood pearls over his lower lip, pauses, then slips down his chin. Thor leans forward before it can fall, licks it off. When he leans back, the understanding in Loki’s eyes hits him like electric shock, furious fire. The thunder rolls, again: coming closer still.

“My brother,” he whispers, and it is purest wonder. “ _My brother._ ”

Loki falls upon him like a wild thing. It’s so very easy to give over to it. The sound of rain beats fierce upon the low roof; even as Thor revels in the sound, it hardly seems to matter anymore. What’s more important is ripping free of his clothing, thrusting it aside. In turn, Loki’s armour proves more complicated than the simple borrowed clothing gifted by the queen. He could make it easier, perhaps, by simply willing it away. But Thor is glad he does not. There’s something intrinsically _Loki_ about this: having to work, having to earn what he’s seen ten thousand times before, though never like _this_.

And he is indeed glorious in his nakedness, even with the new scars that litter his body with the memory of moments Thor has never shared in. He doesn’t care, not now. Instead he worships with his mouth, Loki laid out about the bed of furs and fine linens. Though he mouths words with no sound, the way Loki moves beneath him says he hears every single one.

Taking him in his mouth is the only thing that stills his brother’s writhing form. Loki’s shock hits him like a palpable force; in turn Thor takes it willingly, staring up at him with the cock still between his lips. It’s a challenge: if his brother had not truly believed, then there is no recourse now. Thor will not allow it. He’s already pulling up, placing a strikingly tender kiss to the trembling tip. Then he’s moving down, tongue then the light rasp of beard over his sac. He drifts further down, but places again only a kiss there. That would be too much, tonight.

Instead he rises up, giving Loki a taste of himself. Even as he lays out over him, he closes Loki’s cock between his thighs. A hiss and he rises up on his elbows, giving Loki a curious look.

“Oaf,” Loki gasps out, even as he tries still to be so haughty. Thor only chuckles, ghosting a kiss over pouting lips; Loki rolls his eyes, bucks him upward. There a hand passes between them, damp with conjured oil. Once those long fingers have made his thighs slippery and slick, they pass in low tease over his shaft. When he draws back, Loki fists his hair for good measure; Thor has never so much missed its old length.

“Shall we?”

It is so easy to allow Loki to fuck up between his thighs. The rhythm comes sloppy, staccato; neither of them can quite find it, too desperate to cross over this point of no turning back. It’s Thor who reaches behind, two longest fingers ghosting over where the tip of his cock pokes through. A gasp, and Loki comes hard, startled and stunned. As Thor laughs, he allows Loki to thrust him off, grumbling all the while; it’s but a moment before Loki shoves him over, and swallow him down in turn.

Afterwards, lying together with him is both strange and wonderful; the passage of time seems an ethereal, ephemeral thing, a mortal concept they need not bother themselves with. The rain eventually lessens to first a drizzle, and then to nothing at all. In the distance he can feel the clearing of the clouds, the change in air pressure soft and welcome against damp skin. Loki shifts in his grip, solid and precious and _real_ ; Thor can but curl tighter, the movement of his skin against his brother’s a spark that could but start fresh storm.

The knock at the door startles them both. “Thor?”

Already he’s rolling to his feet, reaching for his trousers; behind him, he knows Loki reclines still in his bed, uncaring of his nakedness. Thor must resist the temptation to look back. He will be lost if he does.

“Who is that?”

“The queen.” And he raises his voice, possibly somewhat louder than necessary; it echoes in this small warm chamber like rich thunder. “Just a moment!”

“…the queen?”

Turning at Loki’s quizzical tone, Thor hopes his now-closed trousers will be aid enough in his escape. “Of Wakanda,” he clarifies, and supresses a low groan; Loki lies amongst the ruin of sheets and covers in a fashion more lewd than even his experienced imagination could have dreamed up. “…it’s probably best if you stay here.”

He shifts lazily, but Thor knows all too well the warning flash in darkened eyes. “Ashamed of me already?”

Sometimes only brutal honesty is the way to defeat the God of Lies. “Her brother just died.” He turns, runs a hand back through his hair, decides against a shirt; from what he’s gathered of her culture, Shuri’s unlikely to take offense. “And she just took the throne.” Glancing back to Loki, who has chosen now to sit upright, he adds, very quiet: “You and I, of all people, should know something of how that feels.”

For a moment he remains still, pale and silvered and strong – a lightning bolt, held still in the moments before strike. And then Loki blinks, and does not look away. “Let me come with you.”

The ease of Loki’s seiðr has them both far more respectable in but a blink; for not the first time, Thor knows that he ought never mock it again. In silence and in tandem they move to the door, Thor opening it wide. Shuri stands there alone, barefoot still, skin silvered ebony in the moonlight.

Even as her eyes widen to see his companion, Thor bows his head, then looks her evenly and slow. “Queen Shuri,” he begins, simple and strong, “this is my brother, Loki.” Then he turns to him, one eyebrow raised. “Loki, this is Shuri, Queen of Wakanda.”

When they both look back to her, she has regained her poise with admirable speed; thinking of her mother, Thor can only imagine it is as innate and it is inherited. “Welcome to our kingdom,” she answers, swift and generous; she’s on the verge of a simple question when Loki cuts smoothly in, eyes watchful.

“Thank you for taking care of my brother in his hour of need.”

That surprises her; some of the easy warmth Thor has yet only but glimpsed beneath her grief and her determination shines suddenly through. “Well, he did come to help us when we needed it. It seemed only fair.” Some of her seriousness returns when she adds, “You are also welcome to stay. As our guest.”

“I thank you,” he says, his courtly manners coming as easily as they ever have. “And if there is anything I can do to aid you…?”

“I’m sure we’ll have you.” Her smile does not manage to be broad, not in her obvious exhaustion, but it’s strikingly beautiful all the same. “But we’ll have to do this properly in the morning. I just…I heard the rain. And I thought…”

Thor coughs, just manages to duck his head against a sudden blush. “My apologies. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“No, it’s…” She glances upward, and even with the dim lighting of the cabin at their backs, Thor can see the skies have almost cleared again. “A happy rain,” she says at last, but does not look to him. “Cleansing, maybe.” This time when she meets his eyes again, they are too old for the youth that should have been hers. “I’m happy for you.”

The urge to embrace her hits him hard; she is so young and so powerful, and he knows something of what trials lie ahead of her yet. He also knows they do not know each other well enough. But it will come. “The battle is not yet over,” he says, perhaps too sudden. She only nods, and again he is struck by both the knowledge and the wisdom in her dark eyes.

“It’s not.” And she gives them both a small smile, mournful and resolute both. “But we can rest a bit, before the next.”

They watch her return to her small vehicle, the little thing soon zipping back towards the city with the arching grace of a comet across the night sky. And yet, morning already presses up against the horizon. The animals have begun their awakening; Thor can hear the distant sound of canine laughter, echoing across the great plains. An answering roar soon follows, and all is surrounded by the chatter of rousing birds. The rising sun will soon burn away the last of the lingering cloud, and then it will begin again.

“Another day,” Loki says, very quiet. And Thor presses close to his side, eyes wide open and arms winding tight around his slight weight.

“Yes.”

And there they stand together as they wait for it to dawn.


End file.
